Horseshoes and Hand Grenades
by tore-my-yellow-dress
Summary: The saddest word in the whole wide world is the word almost. AU fix-it ending.


_**A/N- For you, orbythesea. Merry Christmas, lovely. I love you so much, and am so blessed to have you as a fellow shipper and good friend. This is based upon the meme, "Almost" that you can find on tumblr, and kind of based upon the beautiful gifset made for it. Disclaimed.**_

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><p>

/

He almost ruins her dress.

It's a little after one in the morning and he looks like such a boy, hair long and dripping in his eyes, his puppy brown gaze pinning her from across the yard, and he sees her and it's like a dog finding the scent of its master, the way he saunters up in his navy swim trunks, and they match. Their blues are the same, that evening. The material swaying around her bony knees dark and contrasting to her pale skin, and _her_ hair a mop of untamable curls that won't be recognizable in twenty years.

They'll be ghosts in twenty years.

This will all be a haunting, a memory, but they don't know it yet, and he doesn't know better than to approach the prettiest girl in the mile radius and stick his soaked flesh out to shake, and he says, "Will Gardner," because it's orientation and they're supposed to introduce themselves and it would've all gone as planned if only the grass hadn't been mush and the red cup in her hand hadn't been so full, and he stumbles, and she gasps.

By the grace of God, beer does not stain.

/

She almost asks him to stay.

It's December and even if everyone thinks they're fucking she's still getting the nerve up to touch his hand.

Alicia knows that there's a hole in one of his black tube socks. They sit close on her couch, books nakedly splayed in their laps, so close they can smell each other's shampoo and body wash, and this could be dangerous, but they're too smart for it. So even if her roommate is out and it's so cold outside, _baby it's cold outside, _Alicia focuses on Civ Pro and the weather forecast and anything besides the million or so reasons why she wants to kiss him with an open mouth.

Wanting something unattainable isn't like her.

Wanting _something _is not like her.

And maybe it's just the weather, maybe it's just that she and her roommate watched _Pretty Woman_ last night, maybe it's just that Will's mouth is thin and enticing and she cannot hold a mountain on her shoulders. Maybe it's because he asks her where she's going for the holidays, and maybe it's because he tells her he'll be seeing Helena, and Helena is his girlfriend. Maybe it's like a match being quashed by a wet thumb because she _almost _asks him to stay.

But she doesn't.

That's the whole problem. She doesn't.

/

Somehow, she gets involved in Georgetown's Most Eligible and he almost gets involved because even if he has a girlfriend he can't imagine watching her pick somebody else. It's not a possessive thought, not laced with underlying doggedness, no aggression. Just a deep ebb in the pit of his stomach, a drying in his mouth. The thought makes him sick.

But then she's up on the stage, and he's not sick anymore, because even though she's supposed to pick one of the many shmucks onstage doing the chicken dance or Elvis impressions or some shit, she keeps looking at him, and maybe it's because she doesn't like being in the limelight, but he looks at her and he can imagine her before a crowd of people, cameras flashing.

God, she's stunning.

He almost tells her this when she comes back to the table.

But then the guy she ended up picking moves in and starts chatting her up, and he gets pulled away by Scott asking him about Torts and—

And he doesn't take her home, that night.

The next morning, he almost asks her who did, but he forgets when she asks him a question that he doesn't know the answer to.

/

They almost call one another on New Year's Eve.

.

.

Alicia thinks about it all evening, her grown-up clothes satin and constricting, and she's twenty-two and all the people around her are full blown adults, and even if everyone has always told her she's mature and she pays her tuition and her phone bill and her health insurance like an working citizen, she still feels like a child that hasn't lived enough life, hasn't worked enough, hasn't hurt enough.

It's been less than four weeks, and she misses little things, like the baseball in his hand.

The big things, like his smile and his questions and his vernacular.

She mentally prepares for the conversation that will ensue when she calls him all evening, plans on phoning him from Veronica's apartment, knows that she will slip out of this tight dress and into something warm and comfortable, and his voice will be so smooth in her ear.

But then the clocks strikes twelve, and Peter removes his hand from where it's been at the small of her back for so long it has left an indentation of warmth and familiarity.

He takes his hand and he touches her cheek.

And then he kisses her.

She forgets to call.

.

.

The lines were down in Baltimore. Something about a transformer blowing.

Will's sisters teased him endlessly about waiting by the phone for so long, but he shrugged them off.

They didn't understand what being in love felt like.

/

He almost shatters a glass two days after he comes home from Christmas break with lungs full of precise determination, a mouth drawn in the line of want with her the compass, ready, he was ready to jump off the swing and land hard, but he didn't expect the pain radiating in his kneecaps when he went to pick her up from the airport and found she wasn't there because she'd already gotten a ride from somebody named Peter Florrick.

He almost shatters a glass with a baseball when he gets home the day he drops by her apartment to find the door unlocked, and he goes to open it but weight pushes back, closing it.

"Go away," a man calls out, and then there's laughter, but it's muffled so he can't make out specifics. And it makes him a moment before realizing the sounds coming from inside. Masculine grunts. Moans. The thud of something wooden against a wall.

He rolls his eyes, because _Jesus, will Leesh be pissed_.

Will's footprints leave tracks in the snow in his journey to the library, thinking maybe Alicia has already started battening down the hatches for this semester, but he stops, halfway. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk. His eyes grow comically wide.

"Vivian?" he calls out.

Vivian turns around, smiling cheekily. "Hey, you! What are you—

"Who is in the apartment?" he interrupts her rudely, tongue rubber.

Everything goes very still, snow dusting everything.

Vivian looks confused. "What do you mean?"

"There's somebody in your apartment."

It's a stupid thing to say, but his eyes are furrowing, his heart thud thud thudding, because he wants to believe something different than all the fact and logic depict, he wants to believe in something more than evidence. He almost doesn't want to hear her, doesn't want to watch Vivian's eyes tighten in pity, her pretty mouth curling. "Oh, yeah. Are you talking about Peter? Alicia told me she was going to tell you that they are—

He doesn't mean to be so rude, but he is, and he turns, and walks.

And he doesn't know where he's going, just knows the snow is falling, falling.

The snow is falling so fast.

/

She almost apologizes.

It's the first day of class and Will sits behind her instead of next to her, and she turns around and opens her mouth to explain but there's this look in his eyes and she knows it's like with Owen when he's mad at her about something irrational, and Will's with Helena, anyway.

"Hey," she says, instead.

"Hey," he echoes.

/

And suddenly it's a year later and she's telling him, "I'm getting my degree early," over the music blaring and tequila shots and everyone is celebrating but he's got a tight chest and whiskey lips because he can't believe what she's doing when she leans in and says things in his ear, and they dance, that night. They aren't best friends anymore but he's still the best friend she has and the study partner that has cheese fries at the diner at three in the morning most Tuesdays and she's still the girl he's in love with, still the girl he wants more than all the money and gold.

.

.

And suddenly morning shows itself and the light streams in through broken, dusty blinds, and they've missed class. Her sheets are mismatched and he's still got holey socks on but it's perfect. She is perfect, he thinks, and she's so gorgeous with smeared eyeliner and swollen lips; her hair a dark halo, eyes green and seeing when she blinks awake. She eyes his bare chest and pink nipples and thinks about all the reasons Rome fell, why one can't swallow an ocean whole.

They say nothing, and he moves his limbs through the covers to adjust, to look for his boxers, and he finds them at the foot of the mattress, twisting awkwardly to reach, but then he stops.

Will almost didn't see the ring on the night table, the diamond sparkling without apology.

Everything is without apology, these days.

The boxers are forgotten, and instead he picks up the piece of jewelry with more symbol than any binding legal document. Alicia breathes in raggedly, pulling the sheets up with her when she folds her knees in, back against the headboard. He's so gentle, and she stares at him, waits with moisture pooling in her eyes, before he turns to her, and he's looking at her.

He's look at her, but she's staring at the ring.

"When did he—

"This past summer," she whispers, closing her eyes. "We were waiting until I…"

Alicia makes a little broken sound in the back of her throat, and a fat tear falls down her cheek.

And then Will sees that her mascara _is_ smudged, and he's probably got purple bags underneath his eyes, down to his chin. And they're both really, really hung over. They were really drunk.

Alicia was probably really drunk last night.

He scoots in, unfettered by his own nudity when moves an arm around her shoulders and pulls her in. When she buries her face in her hands and sobs he tries not to let it break his heart, tries to tell his heart to just wait until later, but then tears are in his eyes too when he pulls her hand down, into his, and oh, hell. Will promises her, "It's going to be okay, Leesh."

He slides the ring onto her finger, and she flinches like she's been struck, more tears, more hurt.

He kisses her crown of messy curls, and Alicia will always remember this moment because it's the moment she started feeling like an adult. The moment she started feeling heavy and empty all at the same time. The pieces get put back into place because adults clean up their messes. The boxers picked up, his wallet on the counter. His pride. His sanity. His heart.

Will Gardner slips out of the apartment quietly, and he does not look back.

And Alicia tries very hard not to watch him go.

/

She almost doesn't send a wedding invitation, but she couldn't.

He almost comes to the wedding, but he can't.

/

/

/

/

/

/

There's a dress again.

He almost tells her he loves her dress, the day she walks into his office for an interview and he wants to laugh, he wants to fall out in the floor because how on Earth could he possibly allow someone with a piece of him tucked inside her chest to sit out in the cold with dozens of monsters that call themselves reporters and all the screaming whispers.

/

She almost believes him.

He tells her he said 'she made the right choice' and she tries to smile but she knows him, and she knows his mannerisms, and she's swallowed so much bullshit over the years that she knows what it tastes like.

/

It almost happens that night when she kisses him and it's beginning to snow, but there was still fear and practical uncertainties and all those unknowns that are hard to define with point and talk but then the little dark things in their head put the thoughts there, imagines him taking her hard on a desk with all the windows and the onlookers, imagines her sucking him off in his office bathroom in between a deposition and court.

The latter actually happens, the former almost.

But the truth, when it comes down to it, is that instead of a window being shattered by a baseball there is a lamp and instead of a satin New Year's Eve dress there is a cream-colored suit and an elevator and her eyes are still grin, and they are almost still them.

/

"We almost got caught," Alicia murmurs in mock reproach, wiping her lipstick off the corner of his mouth with her thumb. The parking garage is dim and the Chicago night is humid.

"Almost," Will agrees, sliding his hand down her lower back.

They grin like fools, nose to nose.

/

It's almost there, on the tip of his tongue, but his teeth are locked, and _it's too much. _

_Don't leave me. _

_Don't leave me, Alicia._

_It'll be too much. _

_/_

When he gets in the elevator, and there's a baseball bat in his hand, she almost follows him.

In another life, she knows she follows him.

But he's suspended at midnight, and like Cinderella with her slippers, her ring is still heavy on her left hand. She's utterly confined.

Caged.

/

He almost sees her.

Diane is laughing and her spicy perfume comforts more than a bottle of milk after all the hype, and if Will were to have turned his head a little to the right he would have seen Alicia and the bottle of champagne, but he doesn't. He doesn't, and she leaves.

She leaves.

/

Fingers reaching out, a grim expression on his face. The world 'cursed' hangs heavy in the air and he knows she's getting ready to cry, and it's like it was at Georgetown for a moment, and all he wants is to stop her, and he almost does, almost takes her in his arms and tells her, "It's going to be okay, Alicia. I promise it's going to be okay."

The fingers retract.

He knows better, now.

/

"_Yes," _she snarls, breathing fire and yearn. "I _am!" _

The former almost.

It's a stupid energy drink and all he wants is to slam her back against her desk and hike her skirt up around her hips, fuck her raw and make her babble at the top of her lungs, moan in that breathy way he knows she can if he gets her going the right way. They stop, because time always stops in moments like this, where the tracks of fate are shifting.

Then, they kiss furiously.

He can almost smell how wet she is, his hands tangling in her hair, their bodies pressed so that he knows she can feel how hard he is, how ready they are for something greater, such great heights.

But then he realizes.

And she realizes.

And when they separate, he almost tells her, "Stop."

But she's already out the door.

And he wipes a hand over his face.

And it never ends. It never fucking ends.

/

When Matthew Ashabugh dies, and for a split second Will thinks she's in danger, he almost tells her, "Please be careful. If anything ever happened to you I would have no problem finding the nearest razor blade and crawling home to you."

But he doesn't.

Silly, Will Gardner. Dramatic confessions are for Peter Florrick.

/

But then it does end. It ends when she calls Cary, and not even Alicia knows this, but when she scrolled through her contacts, she paused a millisecond longer on the name Will and changing a life doesn't seem so serious when it all comes down to a single phone call, or two words.

She almost called Will. She really nearly did.

/

He almost finds out she's leaving the firm from her own voice box, but he doesn't.

She almost takes the managing partnership, but she doesn't.

/

/

/

/

Here is the awful truth:

He snuck off to his bathroom after Isabelle had passed out in his bed and Alicia sat up beneath the covers for moments of deep impact, night fallen and everyone asleep, but they stayed awake to grieve. Mutual, but apart, fathoms below. Will picked at his reddened tattoo and remembered Alicia's favorite coffee creamer had a turtle on the side of it and Alicia thought about Will's face when he said the word 'poison', and they were never meant to be like this.

They almost weren't like this.

/

His eyes are cold and bleak, and so many times she almost asks him, "Where's Will?"

But she already knows the answer, because there's still blood on her clothes, in her mouth, on her hands, dripping, dripping. Will bites and she knows she carved this beast herself.

/

The wire goes taut during the Matthew Ashbaugh debacle.

There's so many instances when they have the opportunity to reconcile, moments where Alicia is tired and he is hurting and they are so ready to put down the battle armor and say things they've never had the courage to say before. They wire tightens, and they walk the tightrope, and Alicia wears the suit but almost says 'made love to me' instead of 'banged me', and it shouldn't make any difference, but it does.

They wear each other down with long looks in the offices of Lockhart/Gardner, with phone calls where there's only room for silence because the unspoken things take up too much space.

They wear each other down and down and down and she looks out at the audience and sees him, and even though she's nervous to give this stupid speech she knows the ghosts of what they once were are in the room, haunting, haunting, and she's smiling.

The speech almost goes well, but in a turn, it doesn't.

/

Beer.

Bitch.

Breakeven.

/

Stumbling, fumbling for his zipper. No elevators, no almost broken lamps, and they're drunk, but when has that ever mattered, and there's no room for apologies here even if they both have so many to give, and they've been worn too thin and now everything is snapping, everything is breaking and—

/

"Shit," he curses abruptly sometime later, from the bathroom.

"What?" she calls out, and she doesn't know why she's still here because there isn't going to be any cuddling, not when there's still so much wrong and what were they thinking, what were they—

But she can't just go back to her hotel room like this, her thighs still sticky.

Her thighs still—

"It broke," she states, pitch rising an octave.

Alicia goes pale.

She flails. Limbs already moving, her body jutting forward, a race against time, and God, she's got to get—

"Almost," he walks out, unashamedly nude.

Alicia stops, body hunched forward on the edge of the expensive hotel's bed. She stares at his face, his detached assurances hitting every tender spot. "It was stretched thin," he shrugs, "but not broke."

"Oh."

"Besides," he continues on, finding his boxers and shrugging them on nonchalantly. "It's not as if you're in your prime for getting pregnant, Alicia."

He almost hates that he sees hurt crumpling her face before she schools her expression as one of equal composure. He hates that he can still here her voice tremble when she slowly, precisely, says, "Fuck you, Will."

She almost hates him.

She almost hates him, but the truth with almost is that it only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, and Will does something she wasn't expecting him to do when he slides in beside her, leaning in and letting his breath tickle the nape of her neck when he whispers, "You just did."

She can't hate him.

So she smiles, even if it's tight around the edges. "Yeah, you're right. I guess I did."

His mouth is warm and wet on her skin.

/

The hallway of Cook County Criminal Court is bustling with activity, but there's a lull of time when the red sea has parted and they smile and laugh like real people do, and for a mere moment, Alicia looks and Will and Will looks at Alicia and they realize that out of the ashes of Rome there was still life, even small. It just needed time, and they need time.

She almost waited, that last time she saw him.

She almost waited until he got done with court to talk more with him.

But she never had a plan of what they would talk about, so she left.

So she left.

/

She almost picked up the phone.

She watched it skid in vibrations from across the offices when she was in the meeting with Nelson Dubeck. She hated that man, and all the things he was saying, accusing her of, and for a moment she thought about being rude and leaving, taking whatever call there was.

She didn't.

/

He almost lived.

/

They almost made it. They were so, so _close._

/

_fin. _

.

.

.

.

**alternate ending:**

/

He almost didn't make it.

If the bullet had been less than an inch to the right, he would have bled out in thirteen minutes, not thirty minutes. Finn almost didn't keep enough pressure on the wound. His heart started beating again twice, shocks of electricity bursting through his chest, but the third time it was too tired, and he was too tired, and it was too late for all the king's horses and all the king's men. And he almost died.

It was a close call.

It was so close.

/

They'd almost made it.

They were so, so _close._

_/_

And then he was in the hospital with white bandages four inches thickened around his throat and a breathing tube, and there she was: holding his hand like it was the last piece of hope left to hold onto. His eyes fluttering open three weeks later, and Alicia's makeup ruined with all the crying. "Will, I love you," she whispers, and presses light kisses to everywhere that doesn't hurt.

It's the first time he's heard those words fall from her holy mouth, and it is heaven on earth.

This is heaven, he thinks, and maybe it is.

He almost manages to keep the tears at bay, but he doesn't, and she kisses those away, too.

/

There could almost be anger at the way pairs of Alicia's heels find their way to be strewn all across his apartment, ready to trip over, but there isn't. Instead, there is quiet resignation at the new bathroom products, the organic milk in his refrigerator, the affection of having her pressed up against him in bed every morning, never any engagements rings on the bedside table, never any depositions they can't be late for. It's normalcy, and even if it's only been a month and a half since he was shot and he's still got miles and they've still got miles, they're getting there.

They're getting there, and then Alicia comes home from work on a menial Tuesday night and she no sooner gets in the door before she disappears to the bedroom and closes the door, and she locks it, and fuck. So, for a practical invalid, this relationship thing is almost exhausting. And confusing. And fuck.

"Alicia," he calls for her softly.

When she opens the door, she looks pale and green all at the same time, and her lips tremble.

He hugs her because he doesn't know what else to do, and even if the stitches in his neck sting from how she clings, he doesn't really mind it. He can feel her heart against his skin, too fast. Her body shakes, and he asks her what's wrong, but she just inhales unevenly.

She mumbles something into his skin, buried against him. He squints, rubs her back. Pulls away.

"What?"

Alicia's eyes are bloodshot, terrified.

"You said '_almost', _Will," she whimpers.

* * *

><p><em><strong>AN- I just had to make a happy ending because I'm so tired of sad fics and I go to surgery in approximately six hours so I needed some therapy to help fix my AW heart and my nerves. Hope y'all enjoyed it! Reviews make my day. Thanks!**_


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